Stupid in America: How We Are Cheating Our Kids

This year, the United States will spend about $500 billion dollars, that’s one-half Trillion dollars, on elementary and secondary public education. The United States spends more per student than any country in the world and New Jersey spends more per student that any state in the nation. So you would think New Jersey's students would compare favorably to students anywhere in the world, right? Wrong!

Tonight John Stossel will host an ABC News special at 10 pm called "Stupid in America: How We Are Cheating Our Kids."

From today’s Political Diary from Opinion Journal (subscription required):

Stossel takes his cameras overseas to reveal how other countries are using choice and competition to better educate their young people. As an illustration, he gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and Belgium. The Jersey students were from an above-average school whose test scores were significantly better than those at most U.S. schools. Yet the scores of the Belgian kids were vastly superior.

"It has to be something with the school," a New Jersey student told Mr. Stossel after seeing the test results, "because I don't think we're stupider."

At age 10, U.S. students place a respectable eighth on a standardized test used in two dozen countries, scoring well in all categories. By age 15, however, on a test used by 40 countries, Americans place 25th, well below the international average. "In other words, the longer American kids stay in American schools, the worse they do," Mr. Stossel concludes. "They do worse than kids from much poorer countries, like Korea and Poland."

Mr. Stossel's TV special puts the blame squarely on the U.S. public education monopoly.